After packing the items we determined necessary to our survival, we hopped into an Uber to the airport at around 2:30pm for our flight, which was leaving at around 7pm. We gave ourselves lots of time to explore the new airport. PDX lives up to the hype, they really did a beautiful job. Visit it out if you can, even if you're not leaving on an airplane.
There's a lot of real vegetation in the new airport and a lovely wooden roof and floor. Oh, and here I am all loaded down with my gear. I swear it's not really that heavy.
There's even a little art gallery. The exhibit was the of the design process behind some of the massive wall sized art installations inside the airport.
We grabbed some supper at Grassa (carbonara and a Caesar salad) then found our gate for the wait to board. Then British Airways was whisking us off to London Heathrow airport! The plane was only about two thirds full, and we were lucky to get the row of three seats to ourselves. This is the best possible arrangement I think (well other than first class, but who can afford that?).
After nine and a half hours on the Boeing 787 (mostly spent trying different crumpled up sleeping poses in our Economy class seating), we endured a delayed landing due to high winds. We circled the airport three or four times, and it was quite a bumpy landing. But, as we were landing at Heathrow, a beautiful rainbow appeared! We had a couple hours of layover time to stretch our legs in Heathrow, which is basically a giant high-end shopping mall with an airport attached. Then we boarded a very cramped Airbus A320 for the hour and a half leg to Paris. We were quite exhausted by this point and mostly slept for this leg of the journey.
Once in Paris, at the Charles de Gaulle airport (a massive high-end mall with some airplanes), we quickly passed through customs (modern all-digital scan) and got our passport stamped (took maybe 10 minutes). Then we navigated our way to grab some RER-B train tickets which would get us into the city. On platform 11 we boarded the busy train and went south into the city.
Gare du Nord is giant, exciting and very busy. At this point in the trip, Jamil is thinking maybe that he should have packed less..
It was about a half a kilometer walk to our hotel from the Gare du Nord. We arrived at about 8pm on Monday after about twenty-two hours of travel. Whew!
After we rested and freshened up a bit, we went out for a late dinner at around 9pm. We didn't go far! Immediately next door to our hotel, we found a place called Du Guiseppe that was so cozy and we had the most excellent pizza dinner with a glass of wine.
Pizza with fresh tomato, Parma ham, basil and cheese. The waiter who took this photo was super nice and very chatty (we spoke a combo of French and English).
C'était délicieux!
